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She’s still got it! With an upcoming movie about the actress, a new book of photos and two impending auctions, there’s no doubt Marilyn Monroe continues to fascinate. Photo: Bruno Bernard

‘They’ve tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes, and they will undoubtedly keep trying,” director Billy Wilder once said. “But it won’t work. She was an original.”

And yet, nearly half a century after Monroe’s 1962 death, we still can’t stop trying to fill her size-7 shoes. The sorority of starlets who’ve channeled the ill-fated beauty includes Madonna, Lindsay Lohan, Scarlett Johansson, Ashley Judd, Mira Sorvino and now — with a Marilyn-inspired movie out Nov. 4, as well as a cover shoot in the October issue of Vogue — Michelle Williams. Meanwhile, in December, two auctions ofMonroe’s memorabilia are expected to fetch big bucks. An auction featuring Monroe’s 35-diamond wedding band from Joe DiMaggio and a 1948 nude oil painting by famed pinup artist Earl Moran, hosted by Profiles in History, will take place Dec. 15 to 17 at an as-yet undisclosed location, while an auction of rare 1946 photographs, hosted by Julien’s Auctions, will take place Dec. 2 to 4 in Beverly Hills.

So why the 50-year itch for more Marilyn?

“She is very relevant, even more so now than she was five or 10 years ago,” says Susan Bernard, author of the new book “Marilyn: Intimate Exposures,” which begins with a buzzed-about introduction by Lindsay Lohan and features 40 unique images of Monroe.

(Bernard’s father, Bruno Bernard, was the famous Hollywood photographer who “discovered” Monroe outside his dentist’s office in 1946 and subsequently snapped hundreds of photos of the star over the years, including an iconic shot of her white skirt billowing above a subway grate.)

“We want that optimism of a time and a place where anything is possible,” says Bernard, who notes that Monroe both satisfied the Puritanism of the 1950s and mocked it. “She dared to do what most women didn’t dare do at that time — like her skirt billowing up over the subway grate.”

It was a scandalous move, Bernard points out with a chuckle, that made it clear to those who saw the unedited prints that Monroe wasn’t a natural blonde.

“She’s obviously the greatest sex symbol of all time, and she still sets the standard for glamour, sexuality and beauty,” says Scott Fortner, who runs themarilynmonroecollection.com and authenticates Monroe memora-bilia for auction houses.

But he argues that Monroe’s contemporary appeal resonates in darker and more intimate ways.

“She’s our modern-day Cleopatra — but she was also someone who struggled through life with many personal problems,” he says, citing her troubled childhood, traumatic romances and battles with drugs and addiction. “People can relate to that.”

“We all have a child inside of us that’s looking for some kind of solace, and Marilyn personifies that,” adds Lois Banner, a professor of gender studies at the University of Southern California and author of the photo book “MM-Personal: From the Private Archive of Marilyn Monroe” and “Revelations: Passion and Paradox in the Life of Marilyn Monroe,” a scholarly biography to be released next spring.

“None of this was by accident. She was a genius in her mode of presentation.”

“You could track her month by month, but you couldn’t track her day by day,” Banner notes, arguing that this only fueled the public’s obsession with the breathy blond bombshell.

And despite Marilyn’s low self-esteem (“She did not think she was beautiful. She was always dieting. She was even thinking of breast implants,” says Banner) and risqué relations with the men in her life (“She was considered to be a slut — she would let men use her and then get very angry about it”), Banner views Monroe as a pioneering feminist.

“She formed her own production company. She fought those Hollywood moguls to an absolute standstill,” Banner says.

“She was a very proud woman, and she was one of the greatest actors of the 20th century.”

Bernard agrees it was Monroe’s revolutionary steps as a woman that make her so appealing to today’s aspiring young stars. “I don’t think they look at her as a victim — she was truly bright and curious about the world. So they’ve put a different spin on her, a very intelligent and accurate spin of what they believe she was,” Bernard notes.

The legendary Monroe also remains one of the great style icons. Many of the fall’s fashions take their cue from her Old Hollywood glamour — from satin dresses cut on hourglass silhouettes to white peep-toe pumps encrusted with rhinestones to figure-hugging pencil skirts to lips stained cherry red.

“Marilyn is the epitome of femininity, and people continue to pay homage to her look to this day — either in magazine editorials or personal style. I don’t ever see that stopping,” says Marie Lodi, beauty and style columnist for Rookie, an online magazine for teen girls. “I’m sure we will have some robots that look like Marilyn Monroe in 100 years!”

Yet while stylish young women may admire the curves of Monroe, Kim Kardashian and Christina Hendricks from afar, they frequently whittle their own bodies down to stick-thin skinny.

“I’ve never thought of Marilyn Monroe as a personal style icon,” admits 17-year-old Hazel Cills, a Rookie blogger who lives in Moorestown, NJ. “But I think teen girls recognize that Monroe had something special, and they want it, too.”